The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self

In the Western world, the decades prior to the publication of The Comfort Crisis saw two competing trends emerge: increasingly sedentary, convenience-oriented lifestyles and a simultaneous surge in health consciousness. This dichotomy is central to understanding The Comfort Crisis.

Modern life, with its technological advancements, has led to a reduction in physical exertion for many people, compared with the lives of their distant ancestors. While tool use dates back to prehistory, the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries dramatically changed the way in which humans interacted with their inventions; increasingly, machines began to do some or all of the work that humans had once performed. This process, which began in industry but ultimately found its way into the homes of consumers, minimized the need for day-to-day physical labor, from gathering and preparing food to household cleaning to traveling by foot. The invention of modern computers greatly expedited this shift, allowing for the outsourcing of ever-more complex tasks. By the first decades of the 21st century, remote work, online shopping, digital entertainment, and automated home systems had become normalized.

Yet, alongside this ease, there’s a growing health industry focused on physical fitness, diet, and mental well-being. For example, while the first dieting tips began appearing in magazines in the late 19th century, the diet and exercise industries truly gained their footing in the latter half of the 20th century (Elledge, Annie, and Cameron Katz. “Diet Culture History: From Ancient Greece to Ozempic.” Teen Vogue, 25 Jan. 2024). The timing coincided with the postwar prosperity that made a life of relative ease more accessible than ever. This contradiction is notable—we may move less than our ancestors, but this luxury has perhaps made us more concerned with moving “correctly.”

Easter’s book taps into this cultural zeitgeist, addressing the loss of the types of physical and mental challenges that our ancestors naturally encountered in their daily survival activities. The book speaks to the resulting sense that the comforts of modern life are a double-edged sword, contributing to physical ailments and psychological stagnation as well as ease and convenience. Easter’s advocacy for embracing discomfort is not a call merely for physical robustness but also a response to what he perceives as a cultural craving for a more engaged way of living.